ok i found a hero last night
it was an ammish dude..[as seen on abc last night]
called 'trouble in ammish paradise'

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2606271.htm

its blurb

Summary

The Amish arrived in America 300 years ago and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, today home to around 30 000 hardworking Amish whose lives revolve around their church, families and land.

As well as a strictly plain dress code, they don’t use cars, electricity and eschew modern technology. This program follows two men who let us into their private world because although their Christian faith is strong they begin questioning the all-powerful bishops’ authority and rules.

They are ultimately excommunicated
for not following strict Amish law,

but that’s not the end of the story.
end quote...[after this a daughter gets lucemia]
he does his due duty looking up words meanings..hold true..to what his law is[not the creed that has despoiled..religions globally]

he was outcast for bible studdy
ie going to the source direct
instead of doing as his masters[betters/peers tell him
but he dont forsake them...nor at the end..they him

i shows how one can rssist
but not revile..accept with grace
and give without regret..[a true hero is in us all]

..

If you're making an analogy, SM, she is certainly no zephyr.

I prefer to think of Poirot as more of a kamikaze… as Henry Hitchings explains in The Secret Life of Words, "…meaning 'divine wind' - something beautiful, ethereal, enormous - and was originally used in Japanese of the wind that destroyed a fleet of invading Mongols in 1281."

I've settled on nominating a cohort of heroic people:

Children - about 300,000 of them in Australia - between about eight and 16 years of age who,, almost invisibly to the rest of society, have to be the carer of an addicted or mentally ill parent(s) and frequently of brothers and sisters as well.

I've only met several in my life - but each of them had a quiet maturity, competence and humility in what they were doing that I found extraordinarily humbling.

WmTrevor,

"...'divine wind' - something beautiful, ethereal, enormous...." Aren't words exquisite. Thanks for the metaphorical compliment. I like the Asian penchant to bestow basic qualities from the natural world - "Arousing/Thunder, Keeping Still/Mountain, etc.....

Child carers are worthy of our admiration. Their heroism is more of the stoic kind, it speaks also of humility and altruism. Lexi's examples of Fred Hollows and Catharine Hamlin are notable simply because these people possess skills that can make so much difference and they chose to take them to places (out of a comfort zone). I think it ties in with Houellie's reference to those 'plodders' who trudge through their live apathetically. I think it's more truly heroic to step outside the square to try and find a greater meaning, rather than stay in it and experience limited meaning. Fred and Catharine would have found that, in their efforts to help people who would ordinarily have been without such medical procedures.

Thank you, Yabby. It was a nasty blow, although it was over fairly rapidly. When I was nine I had the experience of spending a night in a small caravan in a cyclone up north (after my dad got stuck in the pub and couldn't get home) so it's not my worst experience : )

Us women would have been helpless to do anything
Poirot,
Are you trying to wind up the G.Greer brigade ? :-)

individual,

I'm quite a resilient and capable person, but in that situation I really don't know what I could have done except watch it unfold. I don't have a problem with accepting that men are stronger and more capable of manipulating the physical world. I also think he acted as any man worth his salt would have under the circumstances - a sort of automatic pilot. Women have their strengths and in many situations offer qualities that are indispensable - emotional endurance being one of them. I've always maintained that men and women are "complementary" to each other, and I have no problem with allowing men to "do their thing" and to attend to cuts and bruises with a bit of tenderness after the fact.

One of my heroes is U Thant. There are not too many people of whom we can say he helped save the world as we know it yet he is name is hardly ever recognised.

“U Thant has put the world deeply in his debt.”

I think of him every time I hear disparaging remarks about the organisation he headed.